2. Edda
Chapter two
Edda
The bell over the shop door had been broken for three months. I kept meaning to fix it, kept adding it to the list that lived in my head alongside replace brake cables on the Raleigh, call about the water heater, and figure out how to survive Bennett Thornhill.
The list was getting longer.
I heard the footsteps before I saw who made them. Heavy, deliberate, the kind of walk that expected floors to hold steady. I was elbow-deep in a rusted Schwinn chain when the shadow fell across my workbench.
I didn’t look up. I already knew.
“We’re closed.”
"Your sign says open."
"My sign lies."
Bennett Thornhill stood in the middle of my shop like he already owned it. Not metaphorically. Legally, he probably did.
Morning light caught the silver at his temples, turning him into something carved from expensive stone instead of flesh and bone.
His suit looked tailored within an inch of restraint, the kind that cost more than my quarterly insurance premium.
His shoes? Definitely worth more than the Schwinn I’d been rebuilding since Tuesday.
I pulled the chain free with a sharp snap that echoed through the shop. "If you're here to renegotiate the thirty days, save your breath. I’ve already contacted three preservation societies and a journalist who owes me a favor."
“I’m not here to renegotiate.”
That made me look up.
His face gave nothing away. That same flat blue gaze that had watched me slide my folder across his desk yesterday. No flicker, no crack, nothing I could read. It was infuriating in the most precise way.
“Then what?” I asked.
He reached into his jacket.
For one wild second, I thought he’d pull out a check. A neat, insulting buyout figure on expensive paper, something meant to end this in a single stroke.
Instead, he produced a folded newspaper, already creased at the relevant article.
“Page six,” he said. “Below the fold.”
I wiped my hands on my jeans and took it.
The headline made my stomach drop.
CITY COUNCIL MEMBER RALLIES FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION AT BELOVED LOCAL SHOP.
Below is a photo of my storefront. My hand is on the door handle. My face caught mid-turn, exhausted and stubborn, exactly the kind of image the press could turn into a symbol.
Diana Cassel’s name showed up in the second paragraph.
“I didn’t talk to any reporters,” I said.
"I know." Bennett’s voice carried no accusation, just fact. "Cassel’s office contacted three outlets yesterday afternoon. She’s positioning you as a cause. The demolition permit hearing is in two weeks, and she’s planning to use your shop as the centerpiece of her opposition campaign."
I read the article twice. The quotes were polished, sympathetic, righteous, the kind of language built to travel fast online, get shared, then forgotten before dinner.
Cassel called my shop "a testament to neighborhood resilience" and "everything Thornhill Development wants to erase."
She wasn’t wrong. That was the problem.
“Why are you showing me this?”
Bennett’s jaw tightened, barely noticeable, but enough to change the air between them.
“Because her interest in your shop has nothing to do with preservation,” he said.
“It’s about my permit. If she wins this fight, she doesn’t save your building.
She drags my project into delays long enough to destabilize the financing.
Then she moves on to her next target. Your shop becomes collateral damage either way. ”
Edda let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “That sounds like your problem, not mine.”
“It became your problem the moment your face appeared in the Tribune.”
I set the newspaper down on the workbench, right beside the rusted chain. The contrast felt almost deliberate.
“So what, you came here to warn me? Out of the goodness of your heart?”
Something flickered behind his eyes, not quite humor, not quite irritation, something caught in between that I could not place.
“I came here,” he said slowly, “because my PR director has a proposal. One that protects your shop and solves my optics problem at the same time.
“Your optics issue.”
“Diana Cassel has spent two years framing Thornhill Development as a corporate villain. Yesterday, you walked into my office and handed me evidence my legal team missed. Today, you’re a folk hero. Those two facts create a specific opportunity.”
I crossed my arms. The shop felt smaller with him in it, the walls tightening in a way that had nothing to do with space.
The familiar bite of rubber and machine oil was still there, but it was being swallowed whole by something else.
Cedar, leather, and expensive restraint.
The kind of scent that didn’t belong in a place where people fixed their own problems.
Where people fixed their own broken bells.
“Just say it.”
Bennett held my gaze.“A public relationship. Six weeks. Enough appearances to establish credibility, enough visibility to neutralize Cassel’s narrative.
In exchange, your shop receives a legitimate consulting contract at a fair market rate.
The back taxes are cleared through an escrow arrangement, and the building is placed in a legal trust that survives whatever happens to my project. ”
The words landed one by one, precise and controlled, like he’d rehearsed them until they stopped sounding like anything that could be questioned.
For a second, I just stared at him.
Then the meaning hit all at once.
My chest tightened so fast it felt like a physical snap.
“You want me to pretend to date you.”
His expression didn’t change. Not really. But something in his eyes sharpened, like he was bracing for impact.
“I want you to accept a business arrangement that benefits us both.”
“By pretending to date you.”
“By appearing together in public settings that imply a personal connection.” His voice stayed level, clinical, like he was explaining a zoning variance. “The press will reach its own conclusions. We simply won’t correct them.”
I laughed. It came out sharp, wrong, the kind of sound that sat in my throat when I was too angry to let it become a scream.
“You’re insane.”
"I’m practical."
"You’re asking me to lie to an entire city so you can build your luxury tower."
"I’m offering you a path that lets you keep your shop without spending the next six months in court."
Bennett stepped closer. I didn’t move, even though every instinct told me to give ground.
"The heritage review you cited yesterday buys time, not victory. Cassel knows that. She’s not trying to save your building. She’s using it as leverage. When she’s done, she’ll discard it. I’m offering you an alternative."
"An alternative where I become your prop."
"An alternative where you become my consultant."
His gaze held mine, unblinking, steady in a way that felt deliberate rather than careless.
"The contract would be real. The work would be real. The compensation would be a fair market rate, verified by an independent assessor. The only fiction is the suggestion that we’re personally involved."
My hands were shaking. I shoved them into my pockets so he wouldn’t see.
“And what happens after six weeks?” I asked. “When the permit goes through, and you don’t need me anymore?”
“The trust is irrevocable,” he said. “The heritage designation would be filed independently, tied to nothing I control. You’d have legal protection that survives the end of our arrangement.”
Our arrangement.
The words left a metallic taste in my mouth.
“You make it sound like a merger.”
“It is,” he said evenly. “A merger of interests, if not assets.”
I turned away from him, fixing my gaze on the walls instead. My father’s tools still hung in the same careful order he’d left them in. The spoke wrench. The pedal removal tool. The chain breaker that had been in this shop longer than I had been alive.
Eleven years.
Eleven years of six a.m. openings and midnight inventory counts.
Eleven years of sleeping on the floor, one summer when the landlord tried to change the locks.
Eleven years of choosing this place over vacations, over relationships, over any version of a life that didn’t involve grease under my fingernails and the constant fear of next month’s rent.
And now Bennett Thornhill was standing in my father’s shop, offering me a deal that could save everything I’d fought to keep.
The price was my dignity.
"The consulting work." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "What exactly would that involve?"
"Heritage assessment. Documentation of historically significant features.
The same analysis you presented yesterday, formalized and expanded.
" He paused, gaze holding steady on mine.
"You’d be advising my team on preservation-compliant approaches to the adjacent development.
Real work. Real expertise. Nothing performative. "
"Except for the part where I’m your fake girlfriend."
A beat.
"Except for that."
I turned back to face him.
He stood perfectly still, hands resting at his sides, that flat blue gaze locked on me like he was waiting out a storm that didn’t belong to him. Patient. Controlled. Like time bent in his favor, even though we both knew his permit hearing was two weeks away.
“Why me?”
The question landed differently than I expected. Not anger. Not confusion. Something quieter, sharper. It pulled a flicker across his face before he smoothed it away.
“Because you’re credible,” he said.
A beat.
“You walked into my office with research my lawyers missed. You didn’t ask for anything except to be heard. Cassel chose you as a symbol because you’re authentic, and that authenticity is exactly what makes you valuable to her narrative.”
He paused, just long enough for the weight of it to settle between us.
“And to mine.”
“So I’m a symbol either way.”
“Yes.” No hesitation, no apology. “The difference is which side of the negotiating table you’re sitting on.”
I held his gaze for a long moment, searching for the lie, the angle, the hidden clause that would make this make sense. He was a billionaire. He could hire actresses, fabricate stories, bury headlines in a dozen quieter ways. He had an entire machine for this kind of thing.
Instead, he was standing in my bicycle repair shop at nine in the morning, arguing with a woman who had already told him yesterday that he’d made a mistake.
“Why come here yourself?” I asked finally. “You have assistants. Lawyers. An entire PR department, apparently.”
Bennett’s hand drifted toward his jacket pocket, then stalled midair. The motion was so small it barely registered, like he had caught himself before admitting something he did not want to say out loud.
“Because you told me I missed something,” he said. “I wanted to see if I still was.”
The words landed between us carefully, like he was placing something fragile on a table and stepping back from it. Not defensive. Not performative. Just exposed in a way he clearly regretted the moment it left him.
I did not trust myself to respond too quickly. There was something unsettling about how honest it sounded.
“I need to think,” I said finally.
“Of course.”
“I am not saying yes.”
A beat passed. He did not rush to fill it.
“I understand.
"I'm saying I need to think, which means you need to leave so I can do that without you standing in my shop like you already know what I'm going to decide."
Something that might have been amusement tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Fair enough."
He turned toward the door, then paused. Looked back over his shoulder, expression unreadable.
"The permit hearing is in thirteen days. Cassel will escalate before then. Whatever you decide, decide soon."
Then he was gone. The broken bell barely managed a sound on his way out, more a suggestion than a warning. I was left with the Schwinn, the newspaper, and a choice I wasn’t ready to name, let alone make.
I sank onto the stool behind the counter and pulled out my phone. The screen lit up, but nothing registered. I just stared through it.
The shop stayed quiet. Not peaceful quiet, but the kind that settled into the bones of the place, making every floorboard creak feel louder than it should, and every draft between the windows feel intentional.
Eleven years of filling this space with work, with motion, with the kind of survival that doesn’t allow stillness had trained me into constant forward momentum.
Sitting still felt like stepping out of my own life without permission.
My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.
This is Marcus Chen, Mr. Thornhill’s assistant. The contract draft will be ready by noon tomorrow if you’d like to review the terms before making a decision. No pressure intended.
I stared at the message.
No pressure intended. As if pressure could be separated from a situation like fat from broth.
Except it already was pressure. Just carefully packaged.
The consulting work would be real. The compensation is fair. The trust is irrevocable.
I thought about the back taxes I had been juggling for two years.
The roof repair I had been putting off since last winter.
The expansion I had been dreaming about since I was twenty-five, the adjacent unit that had been empty for six months, and could double my floor space if I could ever scrape together a down payment.
I thought about Diana Cassel, who had never set foot in my shop, who did not know my name until yesterday, who saw me as a convenient symbol for a fight that had nothing to do with me.
I thought about Bennett Thornhill, who remembered my coffee order after one meeting. Who told his assistant to reschedule instead of dismissing me? Who came to my shop in person instead of sending lawyers?
None of that meant I could trust him. None of that meant this was anything more than a transaction dressed up as concern.
But maybe that was the point. Maybe the only honest deals were the ones where everyone knew exactly what they were buying.
I picked up my phone and typed a reply before I could second-guess myself.
I'll look at the contract. No promises.
The three dots appeared almost immediately.
Understood. Thank you for considering.
I set the phone down and picked up the Schwinn chain again, forcing my focus back to work.
The bell still needed fixing. I added it to the list, as it belonged there all along.